In a digital telephone system, the mobile station (MS) and base station (BS) communicate with one another. A negative acknowledgement or xe2x80x9cNAKxe2x80x9d system is used by certain standards, e.g., IS 770, to allow the receiver of a signal to request retransmission if this signal was incorrectly received. For example, an incorrect reception can be detected by a cyclic redundancy code (CRC) that is transmitted with each packet of signals.
The receiver of the signals can be the mobile station or the base station. This receiver holds a number of packets of signals in memory. The receiver then orders the packets in the correct order, and decodes them.
If one or more signals in this group is faulty, the system may request that signal to be retransmitted.
The allowable number of retransmissions is set during a telephone setup. For example, this number may range between, only zero retransmissions, and ten retransmissions. The allowable number of transmissions effects the delay sensitivity and frame error rate.
The number of retransmissions affects many things. If the number of retransmissions is low, the memory requirements in the mobile station and/or the base station can be reduced. However, this makes it more likely that a received signal will be erroneous. Such errors can lower the quality of the communication.
The present application teaches a technique allowing adaptive decision and determination of parameters in a digital telephone system. More specifically, the present application enables at least one of the communicating stations to adaptively set a transmission value based on conditions. This allows the mobile station to request a maximum number of retransmissions that is less than its maximum allowable value.
A system is disclosed in which the base station and mobile station negotiate to determine a maximum number of allowable retransmissions. This maximum number of retransmissions is based on at least conditions in the mobile station.